Warning: Fear Is Hazardous To Ad Campaign

May 30, 1988|By Don Oldenburg , Washington Post

For years we've been bombarded by them, well-intentioned health warnings that stop at nothing to get our attention and persuade us to change our ways -- or else. Only recently have experts begun to acknowledge that warning the American public about fatal attractions and other life-threatening risks has largely been an exercise in frustration.

''The nation is bewildered about the difference between real and hypothetical health risks, and the bewilderment is understandable given the confusing and conflicting health messages we get,'' says Elizabeth Whelan, executive director of the American Council of Science and Health.

Overall, contends Whelan, the confusing health warnings the public has received have spurred ''nosophobia.'' Defining that word as ''the morbid fear of illness,'' she says it saturates general perception and booby-traps rational communiques between the scientific community and the lay public. She sees evidence of it from exercise crazes and organic onions to the bumper sticker she recently saw that read ''Life Causes Cancer.''

Because of that cultural mind-set, experts are finding it difficult to predict public reaction to the sounding of a health alarm. Americans increasingly are living life as if their lives depended on it. Threats such as AIDS, drug abuse, smoking, carcinogens, even sunbathing, have forced a growing awareness of prevention in our life styles. Experts say that's a healthy change, until taken to an extreme where it becomes a hunkered-down, paranoid mentality. As one psychologist puts it, ''There are just so many new ways of dying.''

But the onus for misunderstanding which of these leaks counts more than others doesn't rest solely on the public. For too long, some experts admit, the scientific community and government agencies that warn people of health hazards haven't taken into account how the public views such threats.

''People rate risks differently than the experts,'' says Sheldon Krimsky, professor of urban and environmental policy at Tufts University. While the public personalizes risk and relies on folk wisdom and peer pressure to come to terms with it, experts depersonalize risk and quantify it with statistical probability. A classic example, says Krimsky, is the unyielding belief that flying is riskier than traveling by car. ''That is an emotional response,'' he says. ''Even if you present people with the numbers, that still doesn't change their perception of flying.''

So far, research has uncovered more about what doesn't work:

-- The public has trouble understanding probabilities when they are small. ''How do you explain 1 in 1 million? Or 1 in 50 billion?'' asks Baruch Fischhoff, a psychologist and professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie-Mellon University. ''It doesn't make much sense to people. . . . If you tell them it is as risky as being struck by lightning and people grossly overestimate the risk of being struck by lightning, then you've done them a disservice.''

-- People typically fumble the notion that probability increases with repeated exposure to a threat. When Fischhoff surveyed undergraduates of an Ivy League college on what they thought the odds were of AIDS being transmitted in one instance of ''unprotected sex,'' the average answer was 10 percent -- a grossly exaggerated estimate. But when asked the odds from repeated instances, the average answer -- 25 percent -- was ''a real underestimate,'' says Fischhoff.

-- People tend to rage about risks out of their control and tolerate those they personally can do something about.

-- Many warnings don't take into account what the public needs to know about a risk. ''Information that is absolutely essential to a technical scientist may have absolutely nothing to do with the public's decision about the risk,'' says Fischhoff.

Fischhoff's current research on adolescent decision-making points that out in warning kids about drug abuse. ''These kids uniformly disrespect this 'Just Say No' program,'' says Fischhoff, who criticizes it for its failure to inform adolescents adequately. Its message, he says, is too simplistic, like the last-ditch ''because-I-said-so '' rationale parents use to stop a debate with their children. ''That turns kids off,'' says Fischhoff. ''It is insensitive to their concerns.''

In addition to being insensitive, many warnings today have taken on heavy- handed persuasive tones. Public health threats such as AIDS and drug abuse have shown up at the forefront of aggressive and controversial ad campaigns and public service announcements. In some of these warnings, the truth in advertising is brutal.